Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

Primary use case is block storage for healthcare IT. 

It has performed very well.

It has allowed us to be more scalable on the solution that we are buying, not having to overbuy a solution that we can't scale out.

The compression and deduplication which will be coming in version 4.3. With just those features, we will be reducing the amount of data and footprint on our hardware.

Among the biggest features that I wanted was deduplication, looking at the zeros coming in, in-line, and those will be available in version 4.3. There is nothing else I can think of at the moment.

Stability has been pretty rock solid for us. We actually did have one outage that was due to a bug in the code which caused the kernel to just run off on itself. It was a known bug. We probably should have been up on the newer code. We were a level behind. Although that bug was known, it caught us off guard.

Since then, we have had no issues with the stability. We have had 100 percent uptime.

Scalability is great, anywhere from upgrading the SPs to adding disks.

I would evaluate the technical support as doing pretty well. I have never really had an issue with Unity's support.

We were using a VNX solution, and the reinvestment was partially due to its age as well as support contract renewals.

When selecting a vendor, it often comes down to price, but we have been pretty much a Dell EMC customer for years. We look for their products, and it is traditionally pretty easy to move from product to product.

Very straightforward; simple. No Professional Services were needed on our install.

I give it a 10 out of 10. I like it for what our application does.

I would recommend it.

The primary use of the solution is 80% block storage and 20% file storage.

The most valuable feature is that the solution is a hybrid system, so you can do both block and file storage.

The solution can use improvement with the patch cluster like the Synchron and Active replication.

I have been using the solution for five years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

Technical support for the solution is good.

The initial setup is straightforward.

As a partner, we provide the implementation service for our customers.

I give this solution an eight out of ten.

Only one admin person is required for maintenance. 

This robust solution fulfills block and file storage as it is designed to do. I 100% recommend this solution for block storage. There are some limitations with the file storage.

This solution will eventually be changed to a newer solution called PowerStore which will have a new range of storage options.

The interface of the solution is good.

I have been using Dell EMC Unity XT for approximately three years.

I have found Dell EMC Unity XT to be stable.

The solution is scalable.

We have approximately 700 people using the solution in my organization.

We are satisfied with the technical support.

We have previously used HPE solutions, but the quality was not equivalent to Dell.

Dell EMC Unity XT installation was not complex.

We have three people who maintenance and support the solution.

The price of Dell EMC Unity XT is higher compared to other solutions. The price should be less expensive.

I rate Dell EMC Unity XT a nine out of ten.

I'm a data center solution architect at Merdasco and based on our customers' needs, we build solutions for them. This product is very flexible, powerful, and suitable for many environments.

Dell EMC Unity OE provides block LUN, VMware Virtual Volumes (VVols), and NAS file system storage access. Multiple, different storage resources can reside in the same storage pool, and multiple storage pools can be configured within the same DPE/DAE array.

Dell EMC Unity is designed for performance and optimized for efficiency. This product is perfect for small, and mid-range customers who need to pay less, but still, get enterprise-level capabilities.

This product needs to have better integration with enterprise backup solutions and archiving devices. Also, it would be improved with better flexibility for replicating with third-party SAN storage products. There are some SAN solutions that help customers to manage their data centers easier than the past.

I've been using this product since 2016 in my customer's data centers.

Small and medium-sized companies can benefit from this product.

Today's mid-range SAN storage is designed with a mixture of some high-end features and enhancement can address new IT demands and EMC Unity XT is also one of them.

If you have access to customers service EMC is one of the best and you could benefit from the knowledge center of EMC and its community 

Based on my experiences there are some SAN products, same quality as Dell EMC Unity. and two parameters help to choose witch SAN solution for which company.
First: What are the requirements of the customer?
Second: What are the differences between storage solutions?

The initial setup of this product is very easy and after some steps, everything is ready to start provisioning it for datacenter servers.

I have implemented this solution through the in-house team. 

This solution has just released and time can say how it could be valuable and stabe in the customer's area.

This product is suitable for customers who are looking for simplicity and cost-effective SAN storage products

I have compared some similar solutions such as 3par and HDS VSP G Series. Among all the mid-range I have known EMC Unity XT series are designed for new IT requirements such as cloud compatibility, NVME ready, and capacity growth.

It's a good idea to add some features to this storage such as better integration with container-based services.

Primary use case is block and file. It's like a combo device. It has performed well, except for the migration process.

It requires a lot less management.

• All-flash performance
• Snapshotting capabilities
• Replication

It's good. It has a lot of good features.

I think there are a couple of things on the file side that we're lacking from the VNX world. It would be nice if we got some of those back. I think there are limitations on how many file systems you can back up at a time. Whereas you can do, I believe, eight continuous per data mover on the file side on the VNX, you can only do something like two or four on Unity. If they could step up to that, that would be good.

It was difficult at first. It wasn't very stable. It was crashing a lot. I think we were early adopters and, during the file side of migration, it crashed a number of times.

Scalability is good, although we only have a 400F. I think we missed out on getting the 450, but it seems to be fairly scalable.

Tech support is good. Just like most of the EMC products, there is a knowledgeable staff.

Setup was fairly straightforward, although we had EMC onsite to give us a hand.

The important criteria for us when selecting a vendor are

• relationship
• quality of product.

I would rate the Unity between seven and eight out of 10. It's not quite at the level of what the VNX was, but it's one of those products that is improving with time.

I would definitely recommend you look at Unity.

We had a stand-alone storage system and we wanted to purchase a Metro Cluster system. We looked at other companies and we found EMC was the best of them. That's why we choose them.

At the moment it's a cluster, we use it in different data centers. In case of any interruption, a power cut or something, our data will be continuously available.

At the moment we are using it with VPLEX. VPLEX is a very big advantage for us. We don't use very many of the Unity's functions. But it does provide good provisioning, allowing us to save space. We use all-flash systems and they are quite fast.

The monitoring part could be better. With EMC storage systems - or Unity and VPLEX, because I'm using them, for the moment - the monitoring part is very difficult. They should improve this to have a better reporting system.

The stability is quite okay. We have not had any downtime with the Unity. We have only been using it for three months. We have just finished the migrations, but so far it is working quite well.

For us, it's scalable.

Setup was very easy.

When selecting a vendor, as a technical guy, it's the power or bandwidth, the technical details, that are more important to me.

I would definitely tell a colleague to go for Unity.

Most of our customers are using it for Microsoft workloads, like SQL Server, Exchange, on-premise use. We have one customer running Oracle on it, all-flash.

They find the performance amazing from what they're coming from. Some of them say it's blazingly fast. They've switched to all-flash.

The whole cycle of provisioning and acquisition has been simplified for our customers. Also, the deployment and general maintenance of it has been greatly simplified. It has cut into our professional services quite a bit.

For our customers, it's the simplicity of it. They find it easy to use, along with the added features, the dynamic volumes. Things like that have been a big improvement over past generations.

The features they have added have been great, they've greatly simplified it. Bigger, faster. They're always leap-frogging, so the next generation, I'm sure, will have newer processors in it. They have improved leaps and bounds on the interface and ease of use, and I would like to see them keep doing that.

They should have more wizards for customers so they can do more of the self-service types of functions, in terms of upgrades and patching, although it's pretty easy right now.

Also, I would like to see more migration tools. When we're putting the Unity in, I would like to see more capability to migrate from third-party storage platforms, competitive platforms. Migrating from their own platforms is pretty straightforward.

We've had no issues. The customers talk to us before they do an upgrade and we say, "Yeah, it should be no problem." They go ahead and do it themselves now, and there have been no outages or unplanned downtime.

There have been no scalability issues with our customer base. Our customers are maybe, at most, a few hundred terabytes, so scalability is not an issue.

Before they do an upgrade, our customers will talk to us and they will also talk to Dell EMC support. From what I know, our customers are very happy with the support they receive from Dell EMC.

The initial setup is straightforward.

I can't give any product a 10 out of 10. But I'm happy with it, I'd give it an eight out of 10. It has been a good product for us in terms of selling it, keeping the customer community happy. 

My advice would be, download the virtual edition of Unity and try it out. Get used to the interface and ease of use. Also, take a look at the cloud-based analytics and the other pieces that go with it, to round out the solution.

It's a replacement for a VNX, it's faster. It has its good points, and it has its bad points.

I don't think it's providing any great enhancements over the existing platform.

There are some features in VNX that I wish were in the Unity. Storage Groups for isolating LANs and hosts. That is a big issue.

We've also encountered an issue when it comes to migrating to compressed LANs on the Unity, and during the Storage vMotion. It appears that the compression algorithm is overwhelmed, and when it becomes overwhelmed it just stops compressing and writes the raw data to the destination. We later copied internally another Storage vMotion to another compressed LAN and achieved much higher compressions on that internal copy. It would be really nice if there was a way to automatically throttle, as a part of a Storage vMotion, to say, "I want to gain the maximum benefits from the compression algorithm, so throttle back the Storage vMotion to implement 100 percent compression."

My colleague has done most of the migration work, but he's also encountered a few other issues in terms of the integration with vCenter. 

It's a box that has a lot of promise, and it was a very shiny new "sports car" when we got it. It has a few dents and scratches in it. That "new car pride," we don't go out and wash it every weekend now. Some of that reality has kicked in. 

I still have expectations, it's an all-flash array, while our VNX, obviously, is not. So we do anticipate, once we've completed the migration and get more experienced with it and maybe with some code upgrades, improvements to some of the attributes, that it will do a good job for us.

We went from the VNX, where we had about 900 spinning disks, to 27 solid-state disks. There have been no failures in the last year.

It had better scale, it costs a lot of money. I definitely think it will. Also, my hope, being that it is solid-state, is that the ongoing maintenance costs will be reduced, on the off chance that our firm might not want to replace it after five years.

Tech support is good. We've always had our struggles over the years with their support. I characterize their level-one support as being somewhat questionable. But if stuff hits the fan and you have to get up to level two or three, you have a priority-one, they always come through.